No, We Are Not Gods

Jim Spencer

Neither Are We Savages

December 16, 1990|By JIM SPENCER Staff Writer

At Hampton High School these days I'd probably run a distant second in a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein.

Ever since I criticized Hampton's principal, Lowell Thomas, and PTA president, Deborah Spencer, for saying that a stabbing in the school halls was unavoidable, my mailbox has been full of angry rubuttal.

I'm going to use this space to respond to a few of the 57 letters the paper received from Hampton High students. Some other letters are reprinted, in part, on Page C8 of this seciton.

"In response to your article on the Hampton High stabbing," Noah Adams wrote, "I feel it is you who should be stabbed ... If my memory serves me correctly, you probably attended school in the '60s or '70s. Hey man, this is the '90s, and times have changed drastically ... Shootings, robberies, rapes and even stabbings occur in every state in one school or another ...

"Sometimes we make rash choices which we regret, but don't you think he (the 16-year-old who did the stabbing) is going through enough? Ease up on us. We're not gods."

No, Noah, none of us are gods, but neither are we savages. In accepting shootings, robberies, rapes and stabbings as an inevitable part of the school experience, we lose a little bit of our humanity.

"Please, do tell what a suitable reaction would be to the stabing," Krissy Markle wondered. "Would a suitable reaction be herding students through metal detectors, maybe even mandatory frisks between classes?"

A suitable reaction, Krissy, would be whatever it takes to keep weapons out of school, whether that is a metal detector, mandatory frisks or some other strategy. Students argue all the time. Occasionally, they fight. There's no way to stop them. But if they're not armed, they usually don't run the risk of killing one another.

"You were insinuating that the school should actually search every student every day," an unsigned letter stated. "There are approximately 1,700 students in the school. So why should 1,700 students be searched every day for a two-person incident?"

For the same reason that millions of airline passengers pass through metal detectors every day because of a handful of terrorists.

For the same reason that public health officials take the one-fiber theory when it comes to asbestos: Exposure to one fiber of something that causes cancer is too much.

"What kind of learning atmosphere would there be if students had to come to school where metal detectors are?" asked Keishya Lea. "Let's be a little reasonable. Metal detectors are unnecessary in public schools. Let's show some respect for the students as well as our school, because that one incident doesn't mean we have to be put in the same status as East Side High."

No, Keishya, right now Hampton doesn't need Joe Clark, the New Jersey high school principal of "Lean on Me" fame, to patrol its halls with a baseball bat. But as long as Hampton's administrators act like they can't keep weapons out of the school, I think it's only a matter of time until someone like Clark will be needed.

Few of my correspondents believed that. They seemed so accustomed to violence in school that they chastised me for having gone to a high school where no one was stabbed.

"You seem to feel that because you had a sheltered childhood, everyone else should be so privileged," said a letter signed "Sick of Your Mess." "You just happened to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

"Maybe the high school you attended was made up of kids from more financially stable communities than some of the communities where students at Hampton live," added Erin Myers. "It was not their choice to be raised in an area of high crime, where weapons and violence become commonplace for them."

Children certainly aren't responsible for the social or economic circumstances they are born into, Erin. But anyone, poor or rich, can choose not to carry guns and knives. Poverty is not an excuse to arm yourself or to hurt other people.

As for the silver spoon in my mouth, I am a product of the Peninsula's public schools.

If the students at Hampton High are sick of my mess, they could send the next round of letters ot School Board Chairman Pat Patrick, a 1969 Hampton High graduate, and ask him how many students got stabbed during his school days.

Yes indeed, things are different now. But that doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't change.

"I felt your allegations were right on target," one student wrote to me. "Never have I felt so much hatred and disgust toward people as I do now. I'm just waiting for the day that you end up writing about one of my friends in your column."

I'm not looking forward to that day, whether the students at Hampton High School believe it or not.

But they can count on me writing about knives and guns and violence in schools until everyone recognizes that getting an education where people don't carry weapons is not a privilege.